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Services Report Fy 2009, Uno Office Of Research And Creative Activity

Services Reports

This Service Report features: Information about The Office of Sponsored Programs and Research; University of Nebraska at Omaha Awards Per Fiscal Year; University of Nebraska at Omaha Submissions Per Fiscal Year; Awards by College/Unit FY 2007-2009; Submissions by College/Unit FY 2007-2009; UNO FY 2009 External Awards; UNO FY 2009 External Submissions; UNO FY 2009 Nebraska Research Initiative (NRI) Awards; UNO FY 2009 Nebraska Research Initiative (NRI) CORE Awards; and UNO FY 2009 Nebraska Research Initiative (NRI) Year 3 Awards.

Convergent Validity And Test-Retest Reliability Of The Preschool Behavioral And Emotional Behavior Rating Scale: Parents As Respondents, Philip D. Nordness, Michael H. Epstein, Lori Synhorst

Special Education and Communication Disorders Faculty Publications

A number of professional organizations have called on the need for valid and reliable assessments that measure young children’s strengths and competencies for the purpose of making decisions about teaching and learning, identifying areas of lesser strength, and for designing and evaluating interventions. The Preschool Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale (PreBERS; Epstein & Synhorst, in press) is a standardized test designed to assess the emotional and behavioral strengths and competencies of children 3 to 5 years of age. Two studies investigated the PreBERS with parents as the primary respondents. The first study investigated the convergent validity of the PreBERS by …

Thermo-Mechanical Interaction Within Engineered Tissue During Freezing, Tenok Dehoyos

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

Cryopreservation is the preserving of biological tissues at sub zero temperature. There are many useful applications to cryopreservation such as storing donated organs till they are needed rather than letting them go to waste. When tissues are frozen and thawed, their original functionality and vitality are not usually maintained. It's been shown that when tissue is frozen its mechanical properties change, such as tensile strength and modulus. Each tissue has an extra cellular matrix made up of many collagen fibrils that is responsible for the structural integrity of the tissue. This study is to investigate the structural changes of ECM …

Estrogenic Compounds Downstream From Three Small Cities In Eastern Nebraska: Occurrence And Biological Effect, Marlo K. Sellin, Daniel D. Snow, Debbie L. Akerly, Alan S. Kolok

Biology Faculty Publications

Recent studies have detected estrogenic compounds in surface waters in North America and Europe. Furthermore, the presence of estrogenic compounds in surface waters has been attributed, in some cases, to the discharge of wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluent. The primary objective of the current study was to determine if WWTP effluent contributes estrogens to the surface waters of Nebraska. A second objective of this study was to determine if estrogens were found in concentrations sufficient enough to manifest feminizing effects on fish. These objectives were satisfied by deploying polar organic chemical integrative samplers (POCIS) and caged fathead minnows at eight …

Design Of Novel Anticancer Drugs Utilizing Busulfan For Optimizing Pharmacological Properties And Pattern Recognition Techniques For Elucidation Of Clinical Efficacy, Ronald Bartzatt

Chemistry Faculty Publications

Chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) is a disorder in which an excessive number of blood stem cells develop into the white blood cell group called granulocytes. The anticancer drug Busulfan is a cell cycle non-specific alkylating agent which is utilized to maintain white blood cell counts below 15000 cells/microliter. The side effects induced by busulfan are significant and affirms the intimation for new drug constructs. Fifteen analogous compounds were generated from the molecular structure of busulfan . These compounds retain the double methanesulfonate functional groups descriptive of this class of alkylating anticancer drugs. However, the carbon chain substituent separating the methanesulfonate …

20 Exemplary Service-Learning Projects, Chicago Public Schools Service-Learning Initiative

Project Summaries

In 1998, Chicago Public Schools became the largest school district in the country to require that students do service to their community as a graduation requirement. Since that time, hundreds of thousands of students have provided millions of hours of service to Chicago's neighborhoods and communities.

The Effects And Perceived Consequences Of Testing Accommodations On Math And Science Performance Assessments, Stephen N. Elliott, Thomas R. Kratochwill, Brian Mckevitt, Christine Kerres Malecki

Psychology Faculty Publications

The present study examined the effect accommodations have on test results of students with and without disabilities and documented experts’ judgments about the appropriateness of testing accommodations. Test score data were collected from 218 fourth-grade students with and without disabilities on mathematics and science performance tasks and from eight testing experts who evaluated the fairness and validity of a sample of testing accommodations used with these students. Results indicated that, for most students with disabilities and some students without disabilities, packages of testing accommodations had a moderate to large effect on performance task scores. Expert reviewers rated most accommodations for …

Completions 2009-10, Uno Office Of Institutional Effectiveness

IPEDS Completions

IPEDS Completions annual report contains the following information:

• Number of awards conferred by program, by level, and by race/ethnicity and gender of recipient
• Number of completers, separately by race/ethnicity, gender, age and level of award

Who Says "I Do"?, Noa Ben-Asher

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Book Review offers an analogy between two forms of resistance to legal discrimination by marginalized minorities: singing the national anthem in Spanish on the streets of Los Angeles in the spring of 2006 by undocumented immigrants, and possible future public marriage ceremonies by LGBT people and other marriage outlaws. Based on the conceptual grounds laid by Judith Butler and Gayatri Spivak, and earlier by Hannah Arendt, the Review uses an analogy to the public singing of the anthem in Spanish in order to argue that the performance of public marriage ceremonies by LGBT people and other marriage outlaws may …

A Single Theory Of Limited Liability Companies: An Evolutionary Analysis, Thomas Geu

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Atp-Dependent Unwinding Of U4/U6 Snrnas By The Brr2 Helicase Requires The C Terminus Of Prp8, Corina Maeder, A. K. Kutach, C. Guthrie

Chemistry Faculty Research

The spliceosome is a highly dynamic machine requiring multiple RNA-dependent ATPases of the DExD/H-box family. A fundamental unanswered question is how their activities are regulated. Brr2 function is necessary for unwinding the U4/U6 duplex, a step essential for catalytic activation of the spliceosome. Here we show that Brr2-dependent dissociation of U4/U6 snRNAs in vitro is activated by a fragment from the C terminus of the U5 snRNP protein Prp8. In contrast to its helicase-stimulating activity, this fragment inhibits Brr2 U4/U6-dependent ATPase activity. Notably, U4/U6 unwinding activity is not stimulated by fragments carrying alleles of prp8 that in humans confers an …

Diversity Graphs, P Blain, C Davis, Allen G. Holder, J Silva, C Vinzant

Mathematics Faculty Research

Bipartite graphs have long been used to study and model matching problems, and in this paper we introduce the bipartite graphs that explain a recent matching problem in computational biology. The problem is to match haplotypes to genotypes in a way that minimizes the number of haplotypes, a problem called the Pure Parsimony problem. The goal of this work is not to address the computational or biological issues but rather to explore the mathematical structure through a study of the underlying graph theory.

Artistic Distance And The Comedia: Lessons From Don Quijote, Matthew D. Stroud

Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research

Don Quijote is a novel, perhaps even the first modern novel (Fuentes 15, Bloom 145). Practically from the date of its writing, however, it has been almost irresistibly viewed through the lens of theater—"Como casi es comedia la historia de don Quixote de la Mancha [ ... ]"in the words of Avellaneda (fol.lllr)—and a growing body of scholarship acknowledges the importance of theatricality to both the structure of the work and the way one interprets it. "Theatricality," as it turns out, is a very flexible term in many of these studies and the widely varying definitions of it have given …

Tunable Laser Interrogation Of Surface Plasmon Resonance Sensors, Vaibhav Badjatya

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

Surface plasmons are bound TM polarized electromagnetic waves that propagate along the interface of two materials with real dielectric constants of opposite signs. Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensors make use of the surface plasmon waves to detect refractive index changes occurring near this interface. For sensing purposes, this interface typically consists of a metal layer, usually gold or silver, and a liquid dielectric. SPR sensors usually measure the shift in resonance wavelength or resonance angle due to index changes adjacent to the metal layer. However this restricts the limit of detection (LOD), as the regions of low slope (intensity vs. …

Systematics Of Ichneutine Parasitic Wasps (Braconidae: Ichneutinae), John Ray Fischer

Theses and Dissertations--Entomology

Ichneutine wasps have received little attention, despite their hypothesized placement at the base of an economically and ecologically important clade, the Microgastroidia s.s. This study combines previous hypotheses based on morphology with molecular evidence from multiple genes (28S: D1-5, 18S, COI, and CAD) to examine phylogenetic relationships of Ichneutinae using maximum parsimony and Bayesian inference. The three main ichneutine groups (Ichneutini, Muesebeckiini, and Proteropini) are each found to be monophyletic, but evidence exists that Ichneutinae itself is paraphyletic with respect to the rest of Microgastroidea s.l. Lispixys is found to be derived from within Oligoneurus, and Masonbeckia is almost …

Private Import Safety Regulation And Transnational New Governance, Errol E. Meidinger

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 12 in Import Safety: Regulatory Governance in the Global Economy, Cary Coglianese, Adam M. Finkel & David Zaring, eds.

This paper examines the role of ‘private’ (non-governmental) regulatory programs in assuring the safety of imported products. Focusing particularly on food safety it argues that private regulatory institutions have great capacity to control safety hazards and to implement dynamic systems for detecting and correcting nascent risks. However, to establish the accountability and legitimacy relationships necessary for long-term effectiveness, private safety regulatory programs must devise new ways of incorporating and responding to the interests of developing country producers, laborers, …

Confronting The Unknown: Mothers’ Reactions, Challenges, And Ways Of Coping With A Child's Diagnosis Of Long Qt Syndrome, Twain Gonzales

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

Long QT syndrome (LQTS) is a life-threatening inherited cardiac condition. It is caused by a disturbance in the ion channel genes that control cardiac repolarization, resulting in ventricular arrhythmias that can lead to syncope, sudden cardiac arrest (SCA), or sudden cardiac death (SCD). Most deaths occur in children, adolescents, and young adults. Although congenital LQTS occurs in 1/3000 to 1/5000 individuals, to date, little research has been conducted on the psychosocial effects of LQTS. Mothers who are confronted with a new diagnosis of their children’s LQTS are likely to have never heard of the disease prior to diagnosis, and few …

Does Alcoholics Anonymous Participation Decrease Learned Helplessness And Increase Self-Efficacy? , Philip John Pellegrino

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) has long been the major treatment of choice in the United States for individuals with alcohol related problems. Research on AA has had methodological problems and there is no clear evidence that AA in and of itself is effective in treating alcohol problems. Treatment studies on alcohol and substance users have found that abstinence self-efficacy and approach coping skills have been related to improved drinking outcomes. Also, depression and alcohol problems have been shown to be highly correlated with each other. Therefore, this study examined the relationship between participation in AA and improvements in abstinence self-efficacy, learned …

The Psychometric Properties Of The Mahan And Ditomasso Anger Scale (Mad-As) And Its Relationship To Cognitive Distortions And Attitudes Among Adults Who Experience Symptoms Of Anger, Dorothy Latella-Zakhireh

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

The influence of cognitive schema on negative emotions such as depression and anger has been investigated in a number of prior studies. This study sought to assess the relationship between anger and various components of anger with cognitive distortions, and dysfunctional attitudes in a nonclinical sample. Subjects were 128 adult males and females who completed several measures related to anger and cognitive distortions. The measures were the Mahan and DiTomasso Anger Scale (MAD-AS), the Inventory of Cognitive Distortions (ICD), and the Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale (DAS). It was hypothesized that cognitive distortions including depressogenic cognitions, as reflected in various subscales of …

These Aren't Your Mothers And Fathers Experiments (Abstract), Thomas J. Santner

Kenneth C. Schraut Memorial Lectures

Informal experimentation is as old as humankind. Statisticians became seriously involved in the conduct of experiments during the early 1900s when they devised methods for the design of efficient field trials to improve agricultural yields. During the 1900s statistical methodology was developed for many complicated sampling settings and a wide variety of design objectives.

Tenth Kenneth C. Schraut Memorial Lecture (Poster), University Of Dayton. Department Of Mathematics

Kenneth C. Schraut Memorial Lectures

No abstract provided.

2009 Program And Abstracts,, University Of Dayton. Department Of Mathematics

Undergraduate Mathematics Day: Programs, Lectures, Promotional Materials

No abstract provided.

Preparation And Characterization Of Some Substituted Benzyl N-Nitrosocarbamates Containing An N-2-(Methylthio)Ethyl Or A Bis(2-Aminoethyl)Sulfide Functionality, Satya Venkata, Eric Shamo, Vladimir Benin

Chemistry Faculty Publications

The synthesis and characterization of some substituted benzyl N-nitrosocarbamates with an N-2-(methylthio)ethyl or a bis(2-aminoethyl)sulfide functionality is reported, as a part of a long-term goal to design and prepare novel photolabile structures that could be used as substances for controlled release of alkylating and/or crosslinking agents. The synthesis was accomplished by reaction of benzyl chloroformates with the corresponding amines, resulting in the preparation of carbamates. The latter were subsequently nitrosated, utilizing two different N-nitrosation methods, to yield the target structures.

An Investigation Of The Knowledge And Beliefs Held By Teachers And Parents In A Parochial School System Regarding Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder And The Variables That Predict Their Knowledge, Kendra-Lee Yvonne Pearman

Dissertations

Problem

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is one of the most prevalent childhood disorders affecting 3 to 5% of school populations in the United States and other countries. Due to the behavioral and/or academic challenges of children with ADHD, they are at risk for grade retention, dropping out of high school, and teenage delinquency, which can lead to negative consequences in society. Children with ADHD are found in every school setting, including parochial schools. Past studies have found teachers and parents have inadequate knowledge about ADHD, which can negatively affect these children. This study investigated what teachers and parents of children in …

A Preliminary Study Of A Non-Invasive Glucose Sensor Based On A Mercury Sensor, Erin Wood

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Diabetes mellitus is a potentially lethal disease that affects 7.6 percent of American people. In the US, it is recognized as the 6th leading cause of death. Failure to control blood glucose levels (BGL) in patients with either type of diabetes can lead to other serious complications as well, such as loss of limb, blindness and other health problems. Controlling and monitoring the BGL in post-op and intensive care patients in the hospital is also vital to their health. Currently the most reliable method of monitoring BGL is through an invasive procedure which monitors the amount of glucose in blood …

Dod Acquisition Workforce Education: An Sba Education Case Study, Richard Davenport

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A Department of Defense (DoD) M&S education task force is in the process of studying the Modeling and Simulation (M&S) education of the acquisition workforce. Historically, DoD acquisition workforce education is not referred to as education, but rather what the Defense Acquisition University (DAU) refers to as "practitioner training, career management, and services." The DAU is the organization primarily responsible for training the DoD acquisition corps in conjunction with service schools and strategic partners in the civilian sector. DAU programs primarily focus on program management, contracting, and management of logistics across the system life cycle. Further, the examples and cases …

Modeling Scenes And Human Activities In Videos, Arslan Basharat

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, we address the problem of understanding human activities in videos by developing a two-pronged approach: coarse level modeling of scene activities and fine level modeling of individual activities. At the coarse level, where the resolution of the video is low, we rely on person tracks. At the fine level, richer features are available to identify different parts of the human body, therefore we rely on the body joint tracks. There are three main goals of this dissertation: (1) identify unusual activities at the coarse level, (2) recognize different activities at the fine level, and (3) predict the …

Room Temperature Synthesis And Systematic Characterization Of Ultra-Small Ceria Nanoparticles, Chetak Patel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Cerium oxide (ceria, CeOâ‚‚) is a rare earth oxide that has attracted wide-spread research interest because of its unique properties such as high mechanical strength, oxygen ion conductivity, oxygen storage capacity and autocatalytic property. In recent years, researchers have discovered that ceria nanoparticles (NPs) are capable of protecting cells from free radical induced damage. Interestingly, it was found that nanometer size (~ 5 nm) ceria can scavenge free radicals quite efficiently, thus acting as an anti-oxidant. This phenomenon has been explained based on the autocatalytic property of ceria NPs. Several methods have been developed for the synthesis of ceria NPs …

Formation Of Lyotropic Liquid Crystals Through The Self-Assembly Of Bile Acid Building Blocks, Karan Tamhane

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Liquid crystalline materials (LCMs) have gained much popularity over the past century. The thermotropic forms of these materials have been extensively studied and employed in a range of innovative applications. The lyotropic liquid crystal systems that have been studied in the past have often been formed by the organization of natural and synthetic small molecules in solutions. In this study, we use self-assembled supramolecular structures as building blocks to fabricate lyotropic liquid crystals. We investigate the self-assembly of a naturally occurring bile acid called lithocholic acid (LCA), to form supramolecular fibrous and tubular structures in basic aqueous solutions. We control …

Determining Emissions From Landfills And Creating Odor Buffer Distances, Nicholas Guarrieloo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With population growing every year, more and more people are looking for places to live. This can lead to construction of houses near and around landfills. As homes get closer to landfills, the odors these landfills produce become more of a problem, and lead to an increase in odor complaints. Modeling these odors and recommending odor buffer distances will help determine limits on how close to landfills new homes should be allowed. This should help reduce future odor complaints. To solve this problem one must accurately estimate odorous gas emissions from the landfill. Often odors can be indicated by methane …